The Miserable Life of Campus Ballers.

A Baller, in every aspect of the name, defines the high end life that almost everyone else admires but have no idea how to live it. After spending the last five years of my life in two different campuses, both as a private student and as a JAB student, I have come to the conclusion that campus ballers are amongst the most miserable people on campus not because of the poor choices they make, in terms of friends and life style, but because everyone else thinks they are okay and that they have everything figured out, from their own parents to themselves. Let’s talk the miserable life of our campus ballers.

The genesis.

Once the results are in from the ministry of education and it has been confirmed that their little daughter or son is a certified genius, most parents make it their business to shove it down the village’s, estate’s or hood’s throat, how great their child is. While it’s a big deal to have good grades and ensure returns on your parent’s investments, these praises and jeers from the hood gets in their heads and they believe they have the world eating from their palms. The experience can be compared to the discovery of a savior or hero in an otherwise forgotten society. If you are yet to get to campus and reading this, buy better earphones and don’t have raise your expectations. You’re not a hero, at least not yet, and campus is nothing like that. Anyway, nobody asks you to do anything in the house or how you are doing or even what you want to do with your life.

The exodus.

Then comes the journey beginning with receiving the letter of admission to that university that everyone has heard of but never been to. Your friends and cousins that have ever been to anything that resemble a university, fly in with unsolicited advice on what to ask for from your parents including what hostels are good for your class, what clothes you should carry to school and even what people to hung with when you get there. It then proceeds to the admission process that sucks for everyone who have ever been there. From those queues you can tell what people are aspiring to be campus ballers and what people are not interested at all.  Some of these people are the ones that will later be referred to as “ule dame mshamba walikuwa na shosho yake kwa line ya admission.” Then it proceeds to the entire first year, where these amateur ballers find their bearing: the high end clubs, hotels and cliques. Where everyone looks up to you and when it comes to class time the lecturers have already mastered your name and admission number which makes you feel like you own the school.

The chronicles.

While the years go by, people come and go but one thing remains, you are still a baller. As a man, you play rugby for the school or have a some important seat in the mafisi Sacco branch in your school, while as a young woman you are a fashion icon with the latest make-up and dress code or is the chairlady of a certain association in the school be it religious or not or even better, the idlers corner has already found a nickname for you based on the time you do your walk of shame form your other baller’s pad or the car that drops you off at school. There are other types of ballers in between, don’t feel left out at all because am talking about both extremes here. Don’t get jittery. Your four years are spent on trying hard enough to put up a façade that your friends, family and lecturers encourage you to. As a baller, your life is spent on letting people know that you are okay when you are not and it sucks the life out of you. At home you are considered the savior and at school we consider you as “ule msee”. It a torturous life. And finally.

The revelation.

As school comes to an end you start realizing that you actually mattered and you spent your time making other people think that you matter leaving out the person that needed that the most. You. not your parents, not your friends and definitely not everyone else. Just you. You start realizing that all the money you spent balling could have been used for something else, like investments or yourself. You start realizing that that geeky friend of yours that you thought was dying from depression was actually sleeping better than you. it dawns you that all these years were wasted and there is nothing to show because those people that helped you drink your ‘hard earned’ money under the presence of friendship are all gone and are drinking with the newest baller in town. While some take this revelation as the basis for a new beginning, others choose the hangman’s noose. It’s a miserable life.